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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Pullman, Washington » Grain Legume Genetics Physiology Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #304344
Title: Achievements and challenges in legume breeding for pest and disease resistance

Author
item RUBIALES, DIEGO - Institute For Sustainable Agriculture
item FONDEVILLA, SARA - Institute For Sustainable Agriculture
item Chen, Weidong
item GENTZBITTEL, LAURENT - University Of Toulouse
item HIGGINS, THOMAS - Commonwealth Scientific And Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
item CASTILLEJO, MARIA - University Of Vienna
item SINGH, KARAM - Commonwealth Scientific And Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
item RISPAIL, NICOLAS - Institute For Sustainable Agriculture

Submitted to: Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 9/25/2014
Publication Date: 1/28/2015
Citation: Rubiales, D., Fondevilla, S., Chen, W., Gentzbittel, L., Higgins, T.J., Castillejo, M.A., Singh, K.B., Rispail, N. 2015. Achievements and challenges in legume breeding for pest and disease resistance. Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences. 34:195-236.

Interpretive Summary: Legumes are important food and oil crops worldwide. Legume production faces many challenges including many biotic stresses. The biotic stresses include diseases such as fungal and bacterial diseases, virus disease and nematode damages, parasitic weeds, and insect pests such as chewing and sap-sucking insects. These biotic stresses significantly constrain legume yield and production. The paper reviews the incidence and relative importance of the biotic stresses and our current understanding of their interactions with the host plants. The achievements and limitations for breeding for resistance to biotic stresses in legumes are critically discussed.

Technical Abstract: Yield stability of legume crops is constrained by a number of pest and diseases. Major diseases are rusts, powdery and downy mildews, ascochyta blight, botrytis gray molds, anthracnoses, damping-off, root rots, collar rot, vascular wilts and white mold. Parasitic weeds, viruses, bacteria, nematodes and damages caused by chewing and sap-sucking insects add to this long list of constraints for legume production. Their incidence and relative importance together with current understanding of their interactions with the host plants are presented. State of the art of current achievements and limitations for breeding for biotic stress resistance are listed and critically discussed. The recent development of large scale phenotyping, genome sequencing and analysis of gene, protein and metabolite expressions can be of great help to further decipher plant-pathogen interactions and identify key resistance components that may be introgressed into crop plants through breeding.